Comment

"Essentially Gould was asking religion to reduce itself to nothing more than a form of entertainment, a masturbatory thought pattern having no measurable impact in the real world, and thus no possibility of scientific testability. In other words, push God into his steadily shrinking gap."

Is this not exactly what religion is and where it is going in the West. Marx said religion was an opiate for the masses which is in a sense an entertainment. I see hordes here in the US, dressing up on Sundays and strutting their stuff and being entertained. Of course they do not see it as such because they are blinded by some emotional fervour to feel good about themselves.

"But such a religion would not be very appealing to hoi polloi, who are for the time being stuck in the real world and have lots of vexing real world problems they cannot solve yet."

I understand your meaning and surely the decline specifically in Western Europe of religion is the proof of what you have written. It isn't very appealing because with enlightenment, it is seen to be more and more irrelevant to one's everyday world problems. Religion has always been a political tool wealded by the powerful to subjugate the masses. More and more only basically educated people are seeing religion for what it is; an illusion not a reality. In the US, evangelicalism is precisely an entertainment and a snake oil remedy for the trials of everyday stress.DM-H.

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The mission of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science is to support scientific education, critical thinking and evidence-based understanding of the natural world in the quest to overcome religious fundamentalism, superstition, intolerance and suffering.